Download Powerpoint Slides Week 2a

Communication
in Collective Action
What is a Social Movement?
• …Collectivities acting with organizational coherence outside institutional
channels with the aim of challenging, resisting or overturning such systems.
Snow / Soule, 2011: 6
• …an organized effort to change laws, policies, or practices by people without
power to make change through conventional channels.
Francesca Polleta
• …an effort by individual / group actors to confront a perceived injustice by
mobilizing political, economic, and cultural power collectively in order to remedy
the injustice and change the values of society.
Marshall Ganz
• …an organized effort to redefine society’s cultural values in order to promote
change.
Touraine, 2002: 90
What is a Social Movement?
• …Collectivities acting with organizational
coherence outside institutional or organizational
channels with the aim of challenging, resisting or
even overturning such systems.
Snow / Soule, 2011: 6
What is Necessary for Collective Action?
• Injustice
• Trigger that amplifies Injustice.
• Claim (Story) that explains why is it necessary to
correct Injustice, and seeks to attract people to the
cause by projecting a vision of something better.
• Communications Infrastructure that spreads the
story about Injustice, the Trigger, and the Claim.
• Repertoires (practices) that challenge structures of
power that elicit consent.
Power, Order, and Consent
Society functions on the basis of consent in which
individuals / organizations submit to institutionalized
rules of power and order.
Social movements challenge institutionalized rules of
power and the systems of belief underlying power in
presenting an alternative.
‘Hegemony’ and Theorizing Order
Society consists of a political
order which rules through law
and force, and a civil society
which rules through consent. For
Gramsci, such consent was the
basis of ‘culture’ in which a
dominant ideology or world view
prevailed. Gramsci use the term
cultural hegemony to describe
dominant ideologies to which we
give our tacit consent. Breaking
this cultural hegemony was the
key to social change.
‘Discipline’ and Theorizing Order
Modern society requires new forms
of control over citizen-subjects to
create order. Older more brute forms
of control were no viable in forcing
modern subjects to conform. The
new forms of control were more
subtle and seemingly less harsh. Such
new forms of control were inspired by
techniques used in modern prisons to
make prisoners submit to rules of
conduct. These techniques of
domination diffused to other modern
institutions in which we become
regimented subjects. Foucault called
this process “discipline.”
Order, Consent and Social Movements
Key Questions
How do people come to understand their consent
to order as somehow intolerable?
How do people come to act collectively to change
what they believe to be intolerable?
Communication
in Collective Action
Communication and Social Movements
• How is communication situated in modelling
protest and social movements?
• What is the relationship of media to collective
activity?
• How do we understand communication and the
notion of social “ties” between people?
• What are the different arguments about media,
social ties and collective action?
Gamson
The Movement / Media Transaction
What does Gamson mean by the “movement /
media transaction?”
Gamson
The Movement / Media Transaction
Conventional media?
Social media?
Gamson
The Movement / Media Transaction
Validation
Mobilization / Expansion
Gladwell / Strong Ties
What makes people participants in activism?
[Degree of personal connection between
individuals and movement – STRONG TIES.
Gladwell / Weak Ties
What kinds of connections does social media
promote?
Social media promotes weak ties between
individuals.
Weak Ties promote networks; strong ties
promote hierarchies.
Repertoires / Ties
What does Gladwell argue are the types of
repertoires necessary for social movement?
What type of ties are necessary to promote such
repertoires
Shirky
What does Shirky argue about social media and
social change?
Shirky
What does Shirky argue about social media and
social change?
“social media have become coordinating tools for
nearly all of the worlds political movements,…” (p. 30)
“…changes in the life of a country, including prodemocratic regime change, follow rather than precede the
development of a strong public sphere.” (p. 32)
Corrigall-Brown / Freeman
How do people come to understand their consent
to order as somehow intolerable?
How do people come to act collectively to change
what they believe to be intolerable?